Saturday, June 17, 2006

A Breakthrough...

Yesterday, we spent over 7 hours with our dear friends S&H who came down from Grad School City to have a long afternoon of soccer watching and a wonderful leisurely dinner with us. It was so great to see them - I'll miss them when we go North!

So, not only was there food, football, and fun, but H (who is a Renaissace scholar I went to grad school with) and I got to talking (while spinning the salad) about the heretofore ambiguous argument of my book project. I was stumbling along, trying to tell her "what it was gonna be about" and she made some very crucial observations about how to connect the two major issues I'm dealing with. I'd always been able to see them separately, but was despairing of ever being able to sit down and figure out how to make them both factor into my argument. She was lovely and said that the connections struck her right away (which means that they're there and I'm not forcing them). Because she works in a field adjacent to mine, she is also had some keen things to say about chronological placement of the texts I work with - possibly anticipating some later stuff as well. Cool!

I'm sorry to be ambiguous, but I did make a page of rough notes from memory after they left. It was like we formed a tiny mental landbridge between Major Topic #1 and Major Topic #2 and the Ice Age humans in my mind (wrapped in fur against the cold) just went on across and set up camp on the other side.

At any rate, it was not only wonderful to see them, but also to get some real reactions to my work - Medieval Woman now resents the hell out of the intellectual vacuum she's been in for a while! But, I'm jazzed about my work again - even though I have to put it on hold for a bit longer b/c we're moving to another country in 9 days...